“Enough already.  I don’t want to hear about Lent. Things are tough enough already.  Why does the church need to add to the bad news?”

Lent has arrived, and with it, the traditional question, “what are you going to give up?”  Chocolate, beer, Facebook...the possibilities are legion. But for many of us, the whole year has been one of self-denial.  The economy may be beginning to show signs of recovery, but the effects of the recession continue with low wages, limited employment, and uncertain housing, compounded for some by the lack of seasonal jobs thanks to an unusually mild winter. We’ve tightened our belts, and now we’ve run out of holes. How can the church demand that we give up even more?

The tradition of giving up something for Lent probably has its roots in the early church tradition of fasting in preparation for baptism at Easter.  However, over time that fast morphed into giving up sins as a form of spiritual training, and then into giving up some form of excess as a means of self-discipline. There is certainly value to that in a culture of indulgence, but cast off from its spiritual moorings it all too easily becomes a new form of self-focus.

By contrast, the true focus of Lenten fasting is turning away from those things that distract us from following Christ. And at a deeper level, entering a place of scarcity - voluntarily or involuntarily - enables us to experience a taste of the sacrificial love of Christ, who, in the words of the letter to the Philippians,   “though he was in the form of God,

   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 

 but emptied himself,
   taking the form of a slave,
   being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
   he humbled himself
   and became obedient to the point of death—
   even death on a cross.” (Phil 2: 6-8, NRSV).

Of course, joining Christ in that attitude of self-giving is not simply a matter of giving up chocolate for six weeks (especially when we know we will be able to over-indulge in it come Easter Day!); rather, it is about making space for the life of God within us.  In fact,  making that space may be as much a matter of attitude as of action.  That is, as we invite God into that place of scarcity, whether it is one we have chosen as a Lenten discipline, or one imposed by economic reality, we may find ourselves unexpectedly filled.

Faith and the Election: What are believers called to do?

Presidential Elections, 1844, from Cornell University Library

It’s begun again, that headlong race towards the Presidential elections on a certain Tuesday in November.  The Republican caucuses and primaries have begun, and in a couple of months it will be our turn in the New York primary.

Religion has been once again prominent in early debates, fueled by the strong religious beliefs of a number of the candidates, who include Mormons, Roman Catholics, a Baptist, a Methodist, and a couple of non-denominational Christians.  

Our nation prides itself on the separation of church and state, encapsulated in the First Amendment, which reads that  "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...."; Article VI specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."  But at the same time, religion inevitably enters political conversation.

So what is the place of religious criteria in our political life?  And how should we as Christians live out our faith in this aspect of our national life?  As we seek to answer these questions, I would suggest that we might turn to two places: Scripture and the Baptismal Covenant.

Jesus’ words as reported in the Gospel according to St Mark (12:17), “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's” (KJV), are often used  as support for the separation of church and state.  However, we need to read them in their original context, a discussion of taxes due to various authorities, both civil and religious, in a country and culture under foreign occupation.  Jesus was answering a question designed to provide an excuse to hand him over to one set of authorities or another for transgressing their laws.

The modern concept of a wholly secular government is far from the minds of our biblical forebears.  They knew nothing of a separation of church and state. “The earth is the Lord's and all that is in it, the world and all who dwell therein,” reads Psalm 24:1.  A similar sentiment  is expressed in the letter to the Romans (13:1), “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (NRSV).  That would suggest that, from a Christian perspective, we must acknowledge some inherent relationship between God and government.  And so we might ask of those standing for office, where do we see the dominion of God expressed in their leadership?

The United State has embraced a form of representative democracy in which members of congress are elected by the public to make decisions on our behalf.  We are well aware of lobbyists of all kinds who seek the support of our rulers for their interests.  As Christians, should we do any less?  

In the Baptismal Covenant, we are asked if we will “persevere in resisting evil” and “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.”  Most of us are all too aware of evil and injustice in our world; few of us have direct power to make dramatic changes.  But our government does.  And so, indirectly, do we.  We can lobby, we can vote, we can use the power given to us in our political system to make a difference in our world.

As followers of Christ, our task is not to simply to rubber stamp the candidate whose religious commitments most closely match ours, but rather, to ask, which among them will enable us to live out our vocations as the people of God in this world.

If I ruled the world...

Photo © Lee Jordan; used by permission

I have a confession to make.  Sometimes, on my day off, I watch Teen Nick. And today I watched a show that revolved around the need to write a new summer hit song. The plot seemed to have something to do with leather jackets, and cheese fries and band members finding girlfriends; the end result was a song called “If I ruled the world.”

I have no idea what the rest of the lyrics were, but it started me thinking, what would I do if I ruled the world?  My immediate thought was, get rid of poverty.  And wars. And maybe climate change.  And then get rid of heartbreak and loneliness and broken relationships. And sickness and sorrow and frustration.

Or, thinking more positively, I’d plant trees and flowers - create beauty - and I’d hug my nephews, and I’d eliminate paperwork so I had more time for people. If I ruled the world.  But I don’t.

Except that’s not entirely true. Every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” And we do that with the confidence that it is really possible. We believe in God who is creator of all things and continues to give life to the world.  We believe in God who is active and involved in history.  We believe in God who can rule the world.

But we also believe in God who chooses not to use direct rule. Instead of overriding human free will, and running the world for us, God has entrusted the world and its workings to human beings, to us. That’s what it means in Genesis, when God says to humankind, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.”  God has delegated the job of ruling the world to us.

Most of us, however, are not in positions of great political power.  We don’t feel like we rule the world.  Sometimes it even feels like the world rules us.

Yet each of us does have power, albeit in small measure.  We exercise power every time we make a decision.  And in aggregate, we do, in many respects, rule the world.  We rule the world when we turn on the heat or drive our cars, so that energy security becomes a major focus of our country’s economics and foreign policy. We rule the world when we decide between buying local and buying from overseas, which means more jobs one place or the other.  We rule the world when we save money for our retirement and when we give to those in need.  There isn’t any easy right or wrong about these actions; all of them shape our world in different ways. But we do in fact, in effect, rule the world.

So what if, instead of abdicating responsibility because we don’t have all the power, we take God’s mandate seriously?  It’s New Year, and time for resolutions.  What if we dreamed what we could do if we ruled the world, and then began to do it? Piece by small piece?

As for me, I think that this year, I’m going to do three things.  Spend part of my gardening budget on planting something that will give the most pleasure to those who pass by. Make a loan through Kiva, to help someone living in poverty.  And try my best to reach out to someone who is lonely or struggling.  What about you?

Hushed waiting*

There’s something special about the first substantial snowfall of winter.  It begins almost like dandelion fluff, but rapidly clumps into something more like drifting petals of spring blossom.  Eventually it settles on the ground, and as it piles up the outlines of the world soften and the sound of traffic is muffled and we enter a time of waiting.

The snowfalls ends, and it’s time for snowmen and snow-fights and snow angels.  And a day or two later, life returns to normal: either the snow melts, or after the fun we shovel and plough our way back into motion.  A few snowfalls later, a dirty crust has built up, and melt has turned to ice, and we are ready for spring. But still the memory persists of the hush that accompanied the snowfall, the suspension of time when all we could do was wait.

Advent is like that time.  A time of hushed waiting.  God, God’s very self, is about to come to earth.  Advent is a time to stop, to catch our breath at the wonder of it all.

“Let all mortal flesh keep silence,

and with fear and trembling stand;

ponder nothing earthly minded,

for with blessing in his hand

Christ our God to earth descendeth,

our full homage to demand.” †

This is, perhaps, the most potent of all time. We wait, we wait in holy silence, for the gift that is God among us.  

It’s like pregnancy, necessary time to get ready for the change that new life will bring.  That’s why the ancient church set aside this time, four weeks (or in some traditions forty days) of solemn preparation, not only remembering the first coming of Jesus Christ as savior, but also awaiting his second coming as gracious judge.  It’s serious, hallowed time.

Of course, everything around us is saying the reverse. 

“Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer” ‡

Da da-da da, da da-da da,

beating its way insistently through the malls and into our brains.

We have to hurry: there is shopping to be done and cookies to be baked and cards to be sent.  And before we know it, Christmas will be here, the food and the gifts and the family gatherings.  And then trees to take down and bills to pay and a new financial year. Da da-da da, da da-da da, da da-da da, da da-da da.

But no. Christmas is not here. Not yet. It’s Advent, and there’s no point being so busy having a shower or painting the nursery that we miss the baby’s birth. As if the baby would really care.

So stop.  Take time. Listen for the hush. For Christ our God to earth descendeth, our full homage to demand.

* Thanks to members of the book group of St James, St James who named Advent as a time of  "hushed waiting.”

† Liturgy of Saint James (fifth century); trans. Gerald Moultrie (1829-1885), 1864.

‡ Peter J. Wilhousky, 1936.

Whose church is it, anyway?

Every December, members of our parish visit assisted living and nursing homes to sing Christmas carols to the residents.  And every time we sing, one resident always declares loudly to anyone within hearing range, “They’re from my church.”  

Her declaration is usually met with tolerant smiles from the other residents, and quizzical looks from parishioners.  And sooner or later someone will whisper in my ear, “Am I supposed to know her?”  No.  This is not some dearly-beloved pillar of the church, forced from her usual pew by circumstance.  This is someone who rarely, if ever, went to church, someone whose closest connection was through a relative. But now, cut off from the wider life she once enjoyed, she now claims us: as far as she is concerned, we are her church.

At the heart of many of the squabbles we Christians have is the question, whose church is it, anyway?  Who does it belong to?  Sometimes we’re referring to the building; sometimes, the community.  When congregations leave our denomination, we have lawsuits over who owns the building and sometimes dueling claims to the parish’s name.  When a church shrinks to the point where it is no longer viable and closing looks like the only option, questions are asked about who gets the building, and the silver, and is there’s any left, the bank accounts; local parishes vie for any remaining members.  When we’re trying to raise money to preserve a historic building, we reach out to the local community.  When you’re talking with clergy, they’ll often call their parish, “my church.” Sometimes people refer to a church by the When an old-time member returns after many years away, and sees different people and different traditions, they ask, “What happened to my church?”  If you were to ask my two-year-old goddaughter what the building is at the end of my street, she would likely say, “my church!” And if you turn to the New Testament, you find the church described as the church of God, and Christ's own body.

So whose church is it, anyway?

Is it God’s?

Is it Christ’s?

Is it the diocese’s?

Is it the priest’s?

Is it the parishioners’?

Is it the community’s?

Is it mine?

Is it yours?

And of course the answer is, yes.  It’s all of these.

It’s the paradox of the church.  Whether you’re talking about the building, or the community called by its name, the church belongs to everyone.  To God, Christ, the nursing home resident, the diocese, the child, the pillar of the church...all of us!

All of us - albeit in different ways - share the responsibility; all of us share the blessing.  And the key is to hold all these in balance, so that no one stakeholder’s interest excludes others.   Any time we forget that the church - the building and the community - belongs to everyone, we forget the far-reaching spread of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Whose church is it? All of ours!

Unfailing curiosity and a large measure of faith.

They are the words every parent fears.  “Your child has a brain tumor.”  The child in question was my four-year-old nephew, and the words were spoken just a few weeks ago.  The summer of 2011 has passed in a whirl of MRIs, surgery, radiation and chemo, along with learning the new vocabulary of medulloblastoma, Hickman lines, and posterior fossa.

And we are learning a new vocabulary of faith.  The classic question you are expected to ask at time like this is “Why, God? Why do you allow suffering?”   And the classic answer of Christian theology is that suffering comes of living in a fallen world.  It is inevitable in a world tainted by evil.  It’s a simple matter of consequences.

But when it’s you who are suffering, or perhaps even harder, someone close to you, the questions are personalized, and we ask them not only of God, but of ourselves.  “Why this child?”  “Why did he get a tumor?”  And “Why is his treatable, but other children in the hospital are dying?”

The generic answer doesn’t help: it doesn’t deal with the specific. Nor does scripture help a great deal.  In John 9, Jesus’ disciples asked him whose fault was it that a man was born blind.  He said, “No-one’s.”  And then he healed the man. 

We don’t have answers to the questions we want to ask, or at least, not answers we like.  But what we do have is a lifetime of faith.  And it is my nephew who has led us in drawing on that faith.  He is the one who wrote a prayer “Dear God, please make me better. Amen” on a piece of paper, rolled it up tightly, and pushed it into a crack in the wall of a 1400 year old church (he also wrote a prayer asking for the big Lego pyramid!).  He is the one who each day at the park, runs up to a large Victorian drinking fountain, puts his hands in the bowl of water, and prays “Thank you God for making me better, and thank you for making all the other sick children better too..”  He greets every new experience with unfailing curiosity, and a large measure of faith.

His thick hair might be almost gone, his bones beginning to show, but his faith in God is strong and secure. Even when nothing makes sense, my nephew reminds me that God can be trusted.

God is generous

“The Lord...is generous.”  The words jumped out at me as I read the epistle one Sunday last month.  Not so much because it was new, as because it was something I hadn’t really thought much about.

God’s generosity is something that it’s all too easy to take for granted.  Sometimes - at least on the good days - we remember to thank God for the gifts of material things: the glory of creation, the food on our tables, the breath of life in a newborn baby.  All good things.  But when Paul writes in Romans about the generosity of God, he’s talking about something far less tangible.  He’s talking about the gift of life with God.

Paul is overwhelmed with the enormity of that gift. He grew up in a world where the gift was far more limited, bounded by the Jewish law.  It’s as if the law drew a circle, with God at the center. Inside the circle were those who kept the law; outside were those who didn’t. The line that marked the circumference of the circle also divided those who belonged to God from those who did not. He, and others like him, were in; everyone else was out.

But then he met Jesus on the Damascus Road, and discovered that the circle had been erased. God was still there in the center, but there was no circle defining who belonged to God and who didn’t.  Instead, there was something like a web, lines radiating out from God to each individual, and then stretching sideways from person to person.

Sometimes the lines reached barely an inch; others, the reached as far as the horizon.  But always they connected people to God, not because those people had been especially obedient or fulfilled some preordained role, but because they had reached out, and God had reached out, and their hands had connected.

We can talk a lot about what it means to be a Christian, about living faithfully, and spending time with God, and putting our trust in Jesus Christ. But in the end, it’s as simple as this. God is generous.  Reach out to God, and God will reach out to you.  And
and you will be firmly and tightly connected to God.

And a byproduct is that you will also be connected to other people, companions in this thing we call faith. Although that’s not always comfortable - because God is generous.  God is generous to everyone, everyone and anyone who reaches out to catch hold of God’s outstretched hands.  That includes sullen adolescents and joyous toddlers, socialists and tea partiers, overtired parents and relaxed retirees, and everyone in between, people of every race and nation and age and social standing.  All of us, recipients of the generosity of God, inviting us to hope beyond fear and life beyond measure.

God is generous.